Today I had to get 4 shots. Two more potentially! Plus a live vaccine in pill form. Wow!

We learned a lot today at the travel clinic. Like, for example, never put two high-ranking executives on the same plane. Check. Also, malaria is only common in one small part of South Africa. However, it’s the place most people go on safari. It turns out Malaria is one of the tougher choices we have to make. The pills are complicated, expensive, and all involve side-effects of one form or another. Choice A: a $5 per-pill new drug that you take 1 day before, during and 7 days after your trip into a malarial region, for a minimum of $40 pp plus $5 a day. Ouch. Most trips into malarial regions will cost us $100 on medication alone with this pill. B: a cheap, once-a-week pill that can give you suicidal thoughts. Oh, and you have to keep on it for 4 weeks after you leave the malarial region. C: A $1-a-day, once-a-day that you must take 1 week before and 4 weeks after entering malarial region. Also makes you prone to sunburn and irritable.

No easy choices! Just to go on safari, and to Laos which is completely infested with them. We got a prescription for the expensive pills but haven’t filled them yet.

We’ve started to make some really good progress in getting this trip on the road (er…air?). Yesterday we sold Justin’s car so we’re now officially a one car family. There’s still lots of furniture and odds and ends to go, but with the dining table, bike, and car sold we’re starting to make a dent. Hopefully by the time we leave in a little over a month the house will be empty!

Although we’re significantly cutting down on “stuff,” we aren’t getting rid of everything. The remaining car will get a year of retirement and wait for our return Dec. 2011. It will also allow us to take one station wagon load of stuff to keep to my parents’ house near Seattle. Between that and a few boxes here and there with friends we won’t have to completely start over on our return.

Tomorrow is our trip to the travel clinic to make sure we won’t catch any exotic diseases during our travels. Wish my arm luck – I’m not a fan of needles!

After 5 months of delays we’re right back at the point of the last post I wrote and could not be more excited! We’ve even made some progress on getting our backpacks set to travel (post on backpack contents soon to come).

We’ll write a proper post about where we’re going once we’ve purchased our tickets, but just to get it down on paper, here’s a basic sketch:

New Zealand

Chile

Argentina

Possibly Peru, Uruguay and/or Brazil

Ithaca, NY

Europe (this will involve lots of land travel, so not sure on countries yet)

Morocco

Either South Africa or Kenya

India

Thailand (and possibly other SE Asia locations)

Possibly China

Australia

What are we missing here? Even though a year is a long time, it’s important to us to not just race around the globe. This seems like a huge, but hopefully manageable, amount. This list also reflects our main set of RTW flights, not all the land travel we’re planning on doing. We can also take shorter hop flights from any of these locations. I think we have lots of options here.